COLIN CHARVIS admitted Wales still have "a hell of a long way to go" despite making the All Blacks work hard for their victory.

COLIN CHARVIS admitted Wales still have "a hell of a long way to go" despite making the All Blacks work hard for their victory.

"In the back of our minds we know that in some respects it was a game we came close to winning," he said.

"But they showed us the standard we have to aspire to by grabbing a couple of late tries.

"In a way we are upbeat, but at the same time we are fully aware that we played a relatively inexperienced New Zealand side and they have beaten us on our home patch.

"That on its own shows us that we still have a hell of a long way to go.

"But the important thing for us is that we started a month ago with 30 guys. Some have come in since, others have gone for the time being.

"What is important is that we keep improving our performances. If we do that we would hope to start getting better results.

"Sure, today we did more defending than attacking but I thought we held up pretty well.

"We lost our composure at times but we did not give away silly penalties. I thought there were long periods when we showed a lot of resolve."

Charvis accepted that his team had been taught a lesson in the art of performing to the bitter end.

"Credit to New Zealand, they showed how to play the game for 85 minutes," he said.

"We were wrong to try and play football in our own 22, but New Zealand showed they could score tries when it matters and you know that when they score one try there could well be three or four others coming.

"We will learn our lessons from this. We will take one step at a time and evaluate the fact that we have three victories from four matches. Unfortunately though, this finished in rather a heavy defeat.

"We still believe we are heading in the right direction though."

Back row colleague Martyn Williams added: "It is more frustrating than disappointing because there was a time when we felt the game was there for the taking.

"In the end it came down to little bounces and the odd decision and New Zealand were clinical when the opportunities came their way.

"We were very positive we could get a result at the start, but in international rugby it's no good playing just for 80 minutes, you have to play for 85.

"It was a big step up for us today. You can see that these guys are used to high intensity rugby in the Super 12 or the New Zealand NPC championship.

"But at least we can be positive now as we go into the Six Nations, we cannot afford to kill ourselves over this defeat.

"We should have perhaps kicked the ball away when we were in our 22 at the end, but we had just got the penalty try and we had some momentum along with the crowd getting behind us. But we will learn from that mistake."